There are work fields exposed to contact accident risks with work vehicles and passenger vehicles on streets and outdoor work. To prevent these contact accidents, work clothes with high visibility that allows drivers to notice the worker's existence are effective. For the work clothes in such fields, clothing in which fabrics themselves are usually dyed in fluorescent yellow or fluorescent orange and a part of which incorporates retroreflective material is used. For example, high visibility clothing is defined in ISO 20471 standard.
Among the work fields requiring the high visibility clothing, there are work fields further requiring flame retardancy. Examples of the work fields include work fields for fire department workers, a part of construction sites and railway maintenance using fire such as welding, is carried out, and a part of gas/petrol stations and painting work that handle flammable substances. The clothing in these work fields is required to have flame retardancy in addition to high visibility.
In general, however, fibers having flame retardancy have poor dyeability or poor color fastness even when the fibers can be dyed and thus a problem arises of difficulty in maintaining sufficient high visibility of the fibers.
As one solution to the problem, a double sided woven fabric has been developed formed by arranging filaments previously spun-dyed in high visibility on the front side and arranging a combination of thermally stable fibers such as aramid fibers and self-extinguishing fibers such as modacrylic fibers on the back side (refer to, for example, Japanese Patent No. 3994054).
As another solution, there have been proposed reversible fabrics using dyeable flame-retardant fibers made of flame-retardant polyester fibers or the like that can be dyed in high visibility, and non-melting fibers such as aramid-based fibers (refer to, for example, Japanese Translation of PCT Application No. 2013-522494).
The color of the spun-dyed fibers used for the front side of the double sided woven fabric in Japanese Patent No. 3994054, however, is determined in advance and thus dyeing cannot be carried out to meet orders. Consequently, a problem arises of expensive storage costs when the spun-dyed fibers are stocked to some extent. In addition, in both of the proposals in Japanese Patent No. 3994054 and Japanese Translation of PCT Application No. 2013-522494, the aramid-based fibers are used and thus problems arise of a rough and rigid texture of the obtained fabric and high material costs.
Therefore, it could be helpful to provide fabric and clothing that can retain flame retardancy and have excellent economic efficiency, light resistance, and good texture by adding high visibility on one side by arranging fibers capable of high visibility dyeing and by using self-extinguishable fibers and general-purpose non-melting fibers together on the other side.